Friday, August 21, 2015

Oakland looking at 'three-pronged path' for new Raiders, Athletics stadiums

COLISEUM | With a Friday deadline for Coliseum City developer Floyd Kephart to present his final financial proposal to city and county leaders, Oakland’s point-person on the project, Assistant City Administrator Claudia Cappio signaled today that other options are also being pursued for stadiums to house the Raiders and Athletics. “We’re still working on what I believe will be a very serious offer in the near term to both sports stadiums in order to keep them here,” Cappio said at a press conference Friday afternoon in front of Oakland City Hall.

The exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA) that the city and Alameda County officials signed last year with Kephart’s group is due to expire on September 24.

Cappio described stadium discussions with both Raiders and Athletics officials in positive terms. “There is honesty and forthrightness at both sides of the table,” she said.

As stated in the ENA, Oakland and Alameda County are able to explore alternative proposals to Kephart’s Coliseum City plan and they appear to be acting on that right. When asked by a reporter whether the city is studying a separate proposal, Cappio said, “I’m looking at all my options in order to fully inform my decision.” She viewed the stadium situation as a “three-pronged path” that includes the Raiders, the Athletics, and Kephart’s proposal....

2 comments:

While I had been strongly against Jerry Brown's multi billion dollar boondoggle proposal, in other words his Crazy Train, however on second thought we might actually have a need for it, in other words to take care of the non stop moves of the Oakland Raiders.

More specifically, first the Raiders were in Oakland, then they moved to the Los Angeles area, then they moved back to Oakland, and now they are thinking of leaving again, and perhaps to move to Los Angeles again.

Or perhaps, and rather than being primarily based in Oakland, Los Angeles, or wherever, the Raiders could become basically a traveling and touring team, and with no real home base, and sort of like the Harlem Globetrotters.

In fact back in the 1800's, the Cincinnati Reds, and which at the time were considered to be the first high quality and serious professional baseball team (this was before the National League and American League were established) played few or no of their games at home, but instead played at least most of their games by touring all over the country and playing various local teams in those local teams' home cities. Perhaps the Raiders could do that, then us suckers in the East Bay would not have to be flim flammed into putting up at least hundreds of millions of dollars into building the Raiders, and possibly also the A's and/or Warriors, a new stadium and/or stadiums, and at the same time we would also be honoring the memory of Al Davis by turning the Raiders, and possibly also the A's and/or Warriors, into a traveling show.

In fact, plenty of circuses and carney shows, etc, spend little or no time in their home base city, but instead do at least most of their performances by traveling to various cities all over the country. So why couldn't the Bay area, and whose politicians include a much higher percentage of clowns than even any Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, and far more flim flam artists than any county fair, also sponsor touring shows.

In fact as the Raiders made tours all over the country, to provide additional entertainment they could bring along some of the Bay area's clowns, er, excuse me, I mean politicians, and such as for instance Dianne Feinstein, Mary "Brain Tumor" Hayashi, Bill and Nadia Lockyer, and Nancy Pelosi, etc, to perform for the local audiences.

According to an article I read about two days ago in another newspaper, the latest proposal to build a stadium for Oakland sports teams now would cost an estimated four billion dollars, and up from previous estimates of approx. ONLY nine hundred million dollars.

And since two of the primary purposes of government are to waste as much money as possible and also to act as insanely as possible, I suggest we get together in a big room all parties interested in building a sports stadium in Oakland and have an auction.

And since it will be an auction, rather than granting the right to build the stadium to the general contractor who comes in with the lowest bid, instead we will pretend we are auctioning a car or a house, and therefore we will declare to be the winning bidder the guy who comes in with the highest, most ridiculous, most outrageous, and most totally insane bid.

But we will not let just anybody into the auction and for the right to rip off the taxpayers as much as possible. Instead, we will make this "Pay to play" all the way. In other words, no one will even be allowed into the auction unless he first provides the local politicians with large election campaign contributions and/or huge under the table bribes.